In general, a furniture hinge is an iron structure which is used as a means for opening and closing a door of various kinds of furniture pieces including dressers, sinks, and the like. First of all, it is important that the furniture hinge provides improved convenience and workability during the position setting of a furniture door as well as minimizes noises or positional displacement occurring in the course of opening and closing the furniture door.
In this case, the furniture hinge includes a mounting plate securely fixed to a wall of a piece of furniture and a rotating plate securely fixed to the furniture door. Particularly, the mounting plate is coupled to a body of the furniture hinge by means of a bolt or a retaining hook so that the opening and closing position of the furniture door is adjusted through the change in the position of the mounting plate.
For example, as shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, a furniture hinge 100 includes a body 110, a rotating plate 120 securely fixed to a furniture door D in such a manner as to be hingedly coupled to one end of the body 110, and a mounting plate 130 securely fixed to a furniture wall B in such a manner as to be coupled to a lower portion of the body 110.
In addition, the body 110 has an engagement hole 112 formed thereon for allowing a fixing bolt 132 to be engaged therewith and a tension hole 114 formed thereon for allowing a tension bolt 134 to be engaged therewith, the engagement hole and the tension hole being spaced apart from each other by a predetermined interval. The mounting plate 130 has a bolt hole 136 formed thereon for allowing the fixing bolt 132 to be engaged therewith and an engagement hole 138 formed thereon for allowing the tension bolt 134 to be engage therewith, the bolt hole and the engagement hole being spaced apart from each other by a predetermined interval.
Thus, in the case where it is desired to set the furniture door D, the body 110 is slightly shifted to a desired position in such a manner that the body 110 is moved in the longitudinal direction thereof relative to the fixing bolt 132 in the engagement hole 112 thereof in a state in which the fixing bolt 132 is slightly loosened. Thereafter, when the fixing bolt 132 is again tightened, the position adjustment work of the furniture door D is completed.
However, the conventional furniture hinge 100 entails a problem in that since it is very difficult to loosen and tighten the fixing bolt 132 while allowing the body 110 to abut against the mounting plate 130 due to the weight of the furniture door D itself in the process of setting the furniture door D, a work force of two persons or so is needed, leading to an increase in the work load.
Furthermore, for the conventional furniture hinge 100, a series of work processes in which the position of the body 110 is set are performed according to intuition of a worker only in such a manner that the body 110 is shifted in the longitudinal direction thereof relative to the fixing bolt 132 in the engagement hole 112 and the fixing bolt 132 is again tightened, thereby making an accurate setting work of the furniture door D difficult and degrading the precision of the work, and thus decreasing reliability.
Meanwhile, as shown in FIG. 3, in an attempt to solve a problem associated with the setting of the furniture hinge 100, there has been proposed an improved furniture hinge in which the body 110 has a recessed slit 116 and a guide hole 118, which are formed thereon instead of the engagement hole 112 and the tension hole 114 of FIG. 2 and an eccentric bolt 150 having a leg 152 is used instead of the fixing bolt 132 of FIG. 2.
Thus, in the case where it is desired to set the furniture door D, when the eccentric bolt 150 is rotated in a forward or reverse direction, the body 110 is moved forwardly or rearwardly by the eccentric action of the leg 152. Like this, the position of the furniture door D can be set only through the rotation of the eccentric bolt 150.
However, the eccentric bolt 150 does not include any means suitable for controlling an external load applied thereto from the furniture door D. For example, in the case where the leg 152 is positioned at an intermediate portion of the recessed slit 116 as shown in FIGS. 4(b) to 4(d), but not positioned at both ends of the recessed slit 116 as shown in FIGS. 4(a) and 4(e), the eccentric bolt 150 is rotated by means of an external load applied to the furniture door D, thus causing a problem in that the furniture door D is frequently displaced.
Therefore, there is an urgent need for the research and development of a novel furniture hinge which improves the position adjustment mechanism of the furniture hinge 100 to increase a variety of conveniences according to the position adjustment of the furniture door D and includes a separate means to control an external load applied to the furniture door D to prevent the furniture door D from being displaced.